Dr. Matthew Tucker, Dr. Elisabeth Nelson, Sophie Schuller, and Chiara Tagliaro discuss how hybrid work, diversity, and flexible design can enhance productivity, well-being, and inclusivity in the modern workplace.
In this episode, we delve into the evolving landscape of workplace dynamics with host Matthew Tucker, IFMA's Director of Research alongside Dr. Elisabeth Nelson, a researcher and author, Sophie Schuller, Built Environment Researcher and PhD Student at the Eindhoven University of Technology, and Chiara Tagliaro, Full-time Researcher and Consultant at Politecnico di Milano. Together they discuss the impacts of hybrid work, the importance of diversity, and the varying individual needs that shape our professional environments today. They also highlight how unique work styles can enhance productivity, the necessity of inclusive design for gender diversity and neurodivergence, and the benefits of choice and flexibility in boosting well-being and performance.
Resources Mentioned:
Sophie Schuller: [00:00:00] I think when we start talking about hybrid, it very quickly becomes very individual. I work from home because it suits my needs and I do work from home because it suits my needs. But what we're also seeing is this proliferation of research that also shows my not being in the office impacts other people in very demonstrative ways.
So I'm always kind of quick to bring it back to. Yes, we want to provide a space for as many people that works as possible. No, we cannot do that on a highly individualized basis. That is unfair to the group. And one of my Biggest concerns is how do we start to, as part of hybrid and as part of the new way of working, because it is a new way of working, how do we start to weave the thread of the value of being in a community and the responsibility of being in a community?
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org to get started. In today's episode, we delve into the evolving landscape of workplace dynamics with host Matthew Tucker, IFMA's Director of Research, alongside Dr. Elizabeth Nelson, a researcher and author, as well as Sophie Schuller, a built environment researcher and PhD student at the Eindhoven University of Technology, and Chiara Tagliario, full time researcher and consultant at Politecnico de Milano.
Together, they discuss the impacts of hybrid work, the importance of diversity, and the varying individual needs that shape our professional environments today. They also highlight how unique work styles can enhance productivity, the necessity of inclusive design for gender diversity and neurodivergence, and the benefits of choice and flexibility in boosting well being and performance.
Now let's get into [00:02:00] it.
Matthew Tucker: We are live at world workplace Europe in Rotterdam. I'm joined by three amazing guests and we're going to be talking about diversity in the workplace. So, it'd be great if you guys could introduce yourselves first.
I should probably introduce myself and say that my name is Matt Tucker. I'm the. Director of research for IFMA, and I'm going to be hosting this podcast. I'll come to you first, Elizabeth.
Elisabeth Nelson: Sure. Yeah. I'm Elizabeth Nelson. I'm a researcher, a writer and I worked with the smart building collective.
My PhD is in biomedical engineering, but I focus on self care and proactive healthcare in the workplace through smart buildings wearable technologies, insidables, all that. I started my journey because I burned out really hard in the U. S. I fell asleep during a bikini wax at a job I loved at a very Google esque space and thought maybe there's something here that I should explore, so that's what I've been doing the last 15 years or so [00:03:00] through a bunch of different workplaces in Europe and finding out what works and what doesn't over here.
Matthew Tucker: Fantastic. We won't get into the bikini wax, but I am interested to know more about your journey as we go through this. So, very much for that. Sophie.
Sophie Schuller: Yeah, very nice to be here. Thank you. My name is Sophie Schuller. I'm also a PhD student. I study at the Technical University of Eindhoven, where I research the impact of workplace design on neurophysiological stress.
My background is in neuroscience and psychology. Alongside that, I am also an urban advisor. I work for Cushman and Wakefield and over the last 20 years have advised a number of organizations on the implication of workplace design, real estate strategy, and more and more inclusive city and the social value creation that can come from real estate activities.
Matthew Tucker: Thanks
Chiara Tagliaro: for having me here. I'm Chiara Tagliaro. I am a researcher at Politecnico di Milano. I finished my PhD a few years ago. It was about key performance [00:04:00] indicators to measure workplace performance from different points of view and involving different stakeholders. Now I'm focusing more on performance indicators.
Diversity more recently. And how different workplaces and this more like dispersed workplace that we're experiencing nowadays is impacting the quality of work and performance of people. Going back to how Elizabeth introduced, like her, explained her path, how she took this direction. I remember after, right after graduation, I graduated in architecture.
I was employed as an intern in some public offices in the Lombardy region offices. In this brand new building that was just inaugurated with I don't know, awarded with plenty of you know, Sam's like best at all building a word and things like that. And then after six months of working there, I realized that it was not good for anyone basically.
So it was dark. It was noisy. The people couldn't find any place where to have a nice break with the colleagues [00:05:00] talking not about work about, about maybe. More informal conversation and things like that. And so I thought, Okay, maybe we can improve this. And so I went back to the university and started my PhD.
Matthew Tucker: Fantastic. Yeah, I can tell this is gonna be a good conversation with you guys. That's amazing introductions. so much. Okay, I'm gonna kick off with the first question. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna ask you. Maybe start with you, Elizabeth. What does it mean to be normal in the workplace?
Elisabeth Nelson: Yeah I think we're much more interesting than that.
I think all of us have unique tendencies. We have our best ways to work. Unfortunately, I think that normal is this idea that a big general group of us work in the way that is very difficult for actually about 90 percent of us.
So when I started my research with Booking. com, I ended up working on what I called at the time introverted spaces, which then became a place that was very good for the neuro diverse people who are going through things. People had jobs that had [00:06:00] sensitive information and guess who also love them?
Extroverts, right? So it's this idea of uniqueness. And I think I'm going to pass to Sophie because she's a good finisher of my beginnings, but yeah I think that this curiosity to find out how we work best and who we actually are, as opposed to pushing ourselves through this cookie cutter, there's so much potential here.
And as a researcher. And in general, inpatient person, I'm still ready for that.
Sophie Schuller: Yeah. I mean, coming at it from a biological or a neuroscience perspective, we are actually from a genetic perspective. perspective, much more similar than we want to give ourselves credit for more than 99 percent similar to every single other human being on the planet.
But in that less than 1 percent variation, there of course exists an enormous amount of variation. And when we talk about neurodivergence, for example, as we will do later on in our closing keynote, we'll talk about the biological basis of neurodivergence, which is that all human experience exists over a normally distributed [00:07:00] Continuum.
That sounds very hefty, but there is this normal distribution of human experience and people at the either end of the extreme on whatever scale or parametric you're measuring, whether it's divergence, anxiety, personality traits, socioeconomic income, they will be If you like the ones with the diagnosis, or they will be the ones that have categorical sensitivities that can tell you a lot about how everyone else is really feeling.
But of course, that's not static. There are a lot of people that exist just before that line, for example, who also share some of those issues. Experiences. So as you say, Elizabeth, when you're really working with people in the margins, when you're really tuning into the sensitivities that they can bring, it's not just to impact and support those people, but also to use their strengths to support everyone else within that continuum too.
Chiara Tagliaro: I definitely agree with all what they said before. It's much more challenging, of course, to look at People that are not considered [00:08:00] the normal or that are not the majority, but actually while addressing these needs, probably we all consider already include the needs of the majority.
So this is pretty curious. I don't know. I think I we are also in a time when the workforce is becoming more and more diverse than before. So our idea of normal was also is ill founded, I think, because it. Before it used to be much more standardized. So we had indeed many males certain age and things like that.
Nowadays, instead, we have a workforce that is much more diversified in terms of generations. We work much longer than we used to do. We are including different I mean, many more women. Unfortunately, not in Italy. I was listening to Very sad statistic the other day that said that only 50 percent of Italian women work, apparently, so that is yeah, bad news for us.
But yeah, so these are two of the first, let's say, diversity characteristics that we can consider that, of course, have [00:09:00] a big impact on Everyday life and how we design and manage our workspaces. Let's just think of chairs. For instance, most of the ergonomic chairs, so to say, are designed for men.
And indeed, when women myself sit on those chairs, they don't respond to our comments. You know, they don't bend as they are supposed to and things like that. So in the end, they don't accommodate us. So that's yeah, perhaps addressing These extremes, we can actually include the whole spectrum
Matthew Tucker: just before we move on.
I just wanted to bring the conversation into the ways in which we're working now in terms of a hybrid world in terms of remote working. I published an academic paper recently on the individual complexities that people have when they're working from home, and we took data from the first COVID pandemic.
And it's fascinating because there's so many individual unique needs. You have some people who just have a strong fear that they don't have a printer around because they're at home, right? And they [00:10:00] need to print their documents. And then you've got the other extreme where people are like, my organization is watching me.
And I, feel so stressed because I need to be on. I need to be online. What do you think about these sort of individual complexities or uniqueness of people that you're talking about in terms of this current new way of working? Or is it just the way we're working now? You know, should we even be saying hybrid?
It's just working right, but it's a different way than we experienced before Covid. How does this play out?
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Elisabeth Nelson: Yeah, I think there's some amazing examples. And one thing that Sophie and I are going to talk about in our talk as well, is what we saw during the COVID pandemic is actually the number of premature births went down significantly.
And one of the things that they attributed to is maybe, like I was saying, women got to sit in positions that were much more comfortable. They got to have more rest. They could schedule a nap. They could live in a way that was much more natural and healthy for growing a fetus. So, that's an extreme situation, right?
We're talking about the birth of a child. But, indeed, I think it very much is the way that we're working now. I, it was a big adjustment for me today to travel to somewhere, you know. We're used to, oh, you know, we can have an amazing conversation online. But I think, you know, I think the uniqueness of this and kind of letting ourselves go also opens up this huge opportunity because a lot of times [00:12:00] when we talk about diversity, we say, oh this wasn't made for a woman.
It wasn't a bunch of men made it. And through their best intentions, if I made a chair, it would be too low for you. It would be too soft for you and it would probably have too bendy for you. Right. And that's even with my best intention. I can't make a chair for you as well as a man can probably make a chair for you.
But when we get into the nitty gritty of exploring and saying, you know, having the right people representing those same people and having diversity, it's much more interesting because we have this going on. And beyond that, instead of saying, Oh, there's the neuro diver, there's the normal, and then there's the neuro diverse, and we're going to give them some niceties and then we're going to continue with the big ginormous group of normal people, right?
It's so much better if we all get a little bit more excited about finding ourselves in this workplace, because the workplace does not suit. The [00:13:00] vast majority of us, and we do need some changes. And I think yeah, Sophie wants to talk.
Sophie Schuller: Yeah, I totally agree with you, but I also feel compelled to add some critical analysis, which is that we have to also question to what degree are organizations responsible for our individual preferences.
Organizations are geared up to manage groups of people. And I think what we're talking about is granularity. That's maybe one, if not two or three stages deeper than what we already have. Right now, we have And we could get the same size keyboard, chair, everything, regardless of your body type or your gender or your nationality or whatever it is, whatever type of demographic factor impacts you.
What we're talking about is trying to break groups down a little bit further so that we can start to speak to differences that exist. Across different continuance, but for smaller subsets of people so that the space becomes or that you can find your space within a work space that represents more of who you are and what you need.
I think when we start talking about [00:14:00] hybrid, it very quickly becomes very individual. I work from home because it suits my needs and I do work from home because it suits my needs. But what we're also seeing is this proliferation of research that also shows my not being in the office impacts other people in very demonstrative ways.
So I'm always kind of quick to bring it back to. Yes, we want to provide a space for as many people that works as possible. No, we cannot do that on a highly individualized basis. That is unfair to the group. And one of my Biggest concerns is how do we start to, as part of hybrid and as part of the new way of working, because it is a new way of working, how do we start to weave the thread of the value of being in a community and the responsibility of being in a community?
Matthew Tucker: It's interesting what you said about organizations dealing with groups and not so much individuals. So here's a scenario for you. How do you feel about organizations who say, which is very common, we have a 50 percent hybrid work in [00:15:00] policy, 50 percent in the office. It's clear. It says in black and white, 50%, not 40, not 60, 50%.
It's very generic or three days on two days at home. What do we think about these more generic policies? Because they're everywhere. You see them everywhere.
Chiara Tagliaro: Yeah, that's true. I've read of an experiment that was done before COVID on a specific workplace because it was the case of a call center in China.
And so the experiment consisted on dividing the workforce into groups. One would stay at home, And one would keep working from the office as normal as usual. And then they noticed that the productivity of people working from home increased a little bit. Of course, this depends in the specific case of a call center on the fact that there was not as much disturbance as in the office, and they could maybe focus more on the tasks. And then they decided to end the experiment, but they still allowed the employees to choose if they preferred to keep working from home or to come back to the office. [00:16:00]Half of the group that was working from home decided to go back to the office and the other half stayed home and their productivity increased even more.
And that was because choice entered into play. So basically yeah, it's true that the community dimension and group dimension needs to be considered, of course, but probably the individual choice is also one point that can actually boost our Well being and productivity as a group overall. So there are different elements to count and put into the study of this very complex issue.
Matthew Tucker: Elizabeth and Chiara, you both mentioned some gender characteristics and how perhaps they're not Whether it's workplace design or ways of working, perhaps not necessarily suited to one gender or the other, it's International Women's Day tomorrow. have published a report today on women in FM.
It's a really interesting [00:17:00] study and it's produced some thought provoking actions that need to take place. One of them being about more flexibility for organizations and actually embedding a culture of flexibility, whether that be Working part time working from home, whatever it might be. I know, Chiara, you've done some really interesting research recently on gender diversity.
Do you want to give us a little bit more? Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah,
Chiara Tagliaro: sure. Yeah, I mean, basically we conducted a literature review just to understand The extent to which we have already addressed this issue and what we figured out is that this is mostly something that is dealt with in the human resource management literature and instead of there's not much intention on the facility management design literature and the two things tend to remain pretty separate.
And that's what I also noticed actually these days. Like, there's a lot of data and information that we have that belong to the [00:18:00] two fields, let's say, but it's never cross checked, so, or very seldom. So, that's, I think the main point of our research, what came out, is, like, it's important to conduct the intersectional studies, so including different diversity characteristics, not only like gender, so include the different aspects and also try to cross check what is more in the, you know, human resource interest and what is instead really reflecting how people use space and how space is supporting people's activities.
Probably if we start merging these two types of data sets, so we can obtain much more insights.
Matthew Tucker: Fantastic.
Elisabeth Nelson: And I think we also have to just admit, we don't have as much data on women. We don't have decades of data on women. We, one of the best talks I saw on diversity, which is going to be part of Chiara's event coming up, was someone talking about when they started using female crash test [00:19:00] dummies.
And Matt, I'm just going to give you a little quiz. Do you know when they started using female and child crash test dummies?
Matthew Tucker: I feel like I should know, but I don't.
Elisabeth Nelson: 2013.
Matthew Tucker: Okay,
Elisabeth Nelson: it's when they started and there's speculation on why this was done. Obviously, it's a lot easier to make a car that doesn't kill men than it is to make a car that doesn't kill women.
So, the standards and of course, it's also a middle sized man. So a smaller man or a larger man doesn't fit this criteria, right? So one of the things we just have to admit is we don't have the data that's informing all of the AI that's coming out. We need to gather more data on women and then apply it as much as we can, because we just, we don't have it.
And that, that also applies to other groups, whether it be social, economic, cultural, anything, we just don't have as much data on them.
Matthew Tucker: Yeah, I think it's a really interesting point. And I think about the IFMA report, which is being released today. And, you know, this is a really in depth report, but there's very little else to go off as a benchmark to that [00:20:00] exists.
And also, I think the statistic in the report is There is only 20 percent of women in the FM industry. Well, so I'd like to go for it.
Sophie Schuller: Yeah,
Matthew Tucker: please.
Sophie Schuller: I'd like to challenge that. And they, and maybe I haven't read the report, but I'm really excited too, because whenever we talk about industries, FM industry, real estate industry, we talk about the people that work.
For the professional organization. So the the leaders or the managers of the cleaning staff, what we don't ever really talk about, even in the context of workplace design is the service staff, the receptionist, the cleaners the mechanical and electric and electrical engineers, and traditionally, of course, cleaning and certainly catering has been a predominantly female group, and they're now some interesting dynamics that are going on within that section of the workforce with A much higher prevalence of migrant men coming into that profession.
But I think the FM profession as a whole is disproportionately focused on women. If you consider the entire supply chain and I don't have the facts. So I'm going to go and fact check myself. Yeah,
Matthew Tucker: I would have to check [00:21:00] where that 20 percent has come from as well. And what the boundary is around it, but I could bore you to tears about the fact that There is no data in terms of an FM population that exists globally.
So it's really difficult to say there are this amount of people and I can draw a line all the way around it because it is so diverse, which makes it such a cool profession, right? Because it's so diverse and it's so, multifaceted in terms of the service scope as well. Okay. We won't debate that in this podcast.
That's another podcast, right? We have the privilege as the audience to have you doing the closing keynote today. Do you want to just give us a little insight or a little sneak peek of what we can expect to see and hear in this keynote?
Sophie Schuller: So Our presentation is exploring the question who are buildings for and it seems like a bit of a glib question As I say, I come from a real estate background, but I spent a lot of time also with architects I've spent most of my profession of on the economic value of buildings and most of my educational profession of understanding [00:22:00] other values of buildings like the social value of the health implication of buildings.
So really, our presentation today is a whistle stop tour through a combination of 20 years of our professional and academic experience that starts to really challenge who are buildings for and which ways can we view them and should we consider them? And of course, at the heart of this is This idea about, and I hate to use this word, human centered.
And I hate to use that word. I put it right up there with livable cities, because if cities aren't livable, then what are we doing? Or if we're not designing for humans and who are we designing for? So it sounds kind of glib, but what we're trying to do is to inform and raise awareness and give the audience an alternative lens to view buildings and the way in which they might not accommodate any of us, actually, but it's not all doom and gloom.
Elisabeth Nelson: No. So, so we do paint a real picture of what's going on. We are not kind of shining over this wonderful AI that it's going to fix everything. And we look at it with a real lens. We also [00:23:00] look at the real. Ripple effect of some of the decisions we are making and can more importantly, can make in the future and even some decisions that we've made, which maybe felt like a step forward when we made them, but are actually a bit of a step backward.
We talked about depending on the age of the audience powder rooms in, in women's bathrooms. And if you're old enough to know, it's this kind of very comfortable place by the toilets that had couches and mirrors, and it was this place where women were supposed to be putting on their makeup, but of course they weren't putting on their makeup.
They were talking and what were they talking about? Men. Because it was, that's what we do, because they're, men are different than women, as we're learning, and not just strange behaving women. They're actually, I'm learning this, raising men myself. But so, there was this kind of safe space to talk about things that they were going through in their life.
And now what we're seeing in workplaces is we're trying to get these, for instance, breastfeeding places, which are usually, in my experience where they store the copy paper and have people coming in to interrupt [00:24:00] and it's a very awkward space. If we had powder rooms, what we could possibly have are women who are all on the same schedule of pumping three hours apart coming in and talking to each other in a safe space about all of the, you know, Crazy and awkward places, things that they're thinking, maybe smothering their husband with a pillow while he sleeps through a baby crying, who can sleep through a baby crying?
And and having the most importantly, you're not crazy conversation. And that is something that is super important in our spaces where men can get together and have talks where women where older individuals, where people who are in very individualistic groups can say, am I nuts? And other people can say, at least not entirely because it's so powerful in this.
And I think the potential of all of this that's going on is better representation through data, getting more data on women, applying it through space, doing some really fucking cool shit. [00:25:00] And having people feel like they're not nuts.
Matthew Tucker: Yeah, fantastic. Well, I think we're about at the end of the podcast now.
I want to really thank you, all three of you for being here today and giving up your time, fascinating subject area. And I'm really looking forward to hearing your keynote later on. So thanks very much guys.
Elisabeth Nelson: Yeah, thank you. And well done with the report. We appreciate it. Thanks.
Host: Thank you so much for listening. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. And as always, please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast for more incredible content.